Idan Ofer's Pacific Drilling files for $60m NYSE IPO

Pacific Drilling is an international ultra-deepwater offshore drilling company, with contracts in Nigeria and Brazil.

Luxembourg-based Pacific Drilling SA, controlled by Idan Ofer, has filed a prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue six million shares at $8-10 per share, raising a gross $54 million at the midpoint value. The shares will be traded under the symbol "PACD".

Pacific Drilling has unlisted shares listed in Norway under the ticker (NOTC: PDSA) administered by the Norwegian Securities Dealers Association. The shares' current price is 48 krone (about $8.85). This means that the Wall Street IPO will be held at around the company's current market cap in Norway of 10.8 billion krone ($1.9 billion).

Under the terms of the private placement in Norway, Pacific Drilling undertook to list its shares on a major international stock market. The listing on Wall Street fulfills this promise.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. are the joint bookrunners, and DnB NOR Markets, Howard Weil Inc., Pareto Securities AS and Simmons & Company International are the co-managers. The underwriters have a 30-day over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional 900,000 shares, which if exercised will boost the IPO's gross proceeds by $8.1 million.

Pacific Drilling is an international ultra-deepwater offshore drilling company that was founded in 2006. Its fleet consists of six ultra-deepwater drilling ships, and it currently operates three recently delivered ships. It expects delivery of its fourth drillship by end of 2011, and has two additional ships on order at Samsung to be delivered in 2013.

Pacific Drilling raised a gross $600 million in an issue of 60 million shares at a company value of almost $2 billion on Norway's NOTC market.

According to Pacific Drilling's financial reports, it has no income. The company reported an operating loss of $20.1 million in 2010 and an operating loss of $24.1 million in the first half of 2011. However, the company's orders backlog totals $2.2 billion

Pacific Drilling has one ship operating, the Pacific Bora, at the Chevron Corporation's (NYSE: CVX) Agbami offshore field in Nigeria. Two ships, the Pacific Scirocco and the Pacific Santa Ana, are undergoing customer-requested upgrades and refitting for operations with Chevron in the US Gulf of Mexico and Total in Nigeria, and a fourth ship, the Pacific Mistral, has a three-year contract with Brazil's Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) (Bovespa: PETR4, PETR3; NYSE: PBR).